Short Poems

My Jeanie:
When Thou art near
The sweetest joys still sweeter seem
The brightest hopes more bright appear
And life is all one happy dream
When Thou art near.

Your larger half, Pauline E. Johnson

The haze is too narrow
To fill the Musashino Plain.

Three violins are trying their hearts.
The piece is MacDowell's Wild Rose.
And the time of the wild rose
And the leaves of the wild rose
And the dew-shot eyes of the wild rose
Sing in the air over three violins.
Somebody like you was in the heart of MacDowell.
Somebody like you is in three violins.

Jabowski's place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls.
When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation:
A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone,
And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented.
I passed today and they were all there, resting in proud isolation, the clock and the crucifix saying no more and no less than before, and a yellow cat sleeping in a patch of sun alongside the family bible with the hasps off.

Here sleeps at length poor Col, and without screaming--
Who died as he had lived, a-dreaming:
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within--
All alone and unknown, at Edinbro' in an inn.

Little volume, warm with wishes,
Fear not brows that never frown!
After Byron's peppery dishes
Matho's mild skim-milk goes down.
Change she wants not, self-concenter'd,
She whom Attic graces please,
She whose Genius never enter'd
Literature's gin-palaces.

Send me such poems as a treat!
By Jupiter! I'd rather eat
A mangy fox or Cheshire cheese,
Or any ordure that you please.

Even in
a world
full of false promises
they will not
forget
their pledge
to come back home—
those geese now flying away.

Four are the Graces: three we know
And Berenicë here below.
See how she holds their linkèd hands,
And wet with perfume by them stands.
Without her now who shines afar?
Not e'en the Graces graces are.

Your breasts are apples soft and warm,
Your lips are roses red,
Time cannot touch your golden charm,
Youth's fragrance has not fled;
The face that fired a thousand eyes
Is still for me earth's dearest prize.